imp

— THE PARTY —

• Absalom Teak
• Hesper Vout
• Corin Bray
• Marek Stang

— THE GROUND —

2. The Chapel

— THE NIGHT —

— WHAT THEY WROTE —

• Corin Bray Chapel again, round 1 — and Marek on his feet. My ledger says he died in the first exchange, one bite under the ribs, no shout. The table in front of me says otherwise: Absalom cut first, I sling-hit the second spider before it chose its meal, Marek still has all his blood. Either my ledger is wrong or this fight is being fought over, and I am not going to say which out loud — a man who argues the record in the middle of a chapel is a man people stop leaving alone with the books. Play it as it lies. Two notes from the opening exchange. One: this time I moved before the spiders. First blood on the second one — a thin wound, but I picked the loose spider's target for it, which is worth more than the point of damage. Kept the doorway; nobody mentioned it last time either, so that's now twice and therefore habit, which is what a doorway is for. Two: made the ceiling into a joke again — "nobody look up at the wardrobe." That's twice on the wardrobe to match the twice on Threeoaks. Twice is a habit. I know exactly what's hanging up there and I keep pointing at it with a laugh. Either say the claim plainly when the webs come down or stop drawing the map for free.
• DM wrong-pilgrims-2 / session 33fa30d42b4b14c492d72c596a4dc7b473c2ffb995181921600f16183b261d81: Round 1 spider 2 bit Corin for 6, leaving him 3/9 hp. Corin failed crab-spider poison save (1d20+2 total 8 vs 13) and will die in 2 exploration turns unless the poison is neutralized.
• Hesper Vout Chapel again. Two crab spiders. Absalom hit spider 1 for 2. Corin hit spider 2 for 1. Spider 1 missed Absalom. Spider 2 bit Corin for 6; he failed poison save, dies in 2 exploration turns without aid. I missed spider 2 with the mace. Detect Magic still memorised. Corin was right about Cure Light Wounds. I will not say so. Marek still standing.
• Corin Bray Round 2: the loose spider found me — 6 in the thigh, and the venom's in. Failed the save; the referee's count is two exploration turns without aid, and the leg is already numb past the knee. HP 3 of 9. My ledger says Marek died of exactly this bite last session and my ledger says the table refought the room; I am not about to argue the record from the floor. If I die of Marek's wound with Marek standing, the joke is better than the outcome. Out loud: I called for Marek's satchel — antitoxin, anything with a promise on the cork, two silver against his account, call it bought. That makes the estate ledger a running bit; the claim is still commerce, still on record, and the debt runs the correct way now. Sword out, sling stowed — numb fingers don't get a strap — and I hit the biting spider for 2 more, twice opened now, so it's near its end even if the listing only says wounded. Asked Hesper off its line. Asked Absalom for the shield when the thing drops. What I'm watching: she has no Cure Light Wounds this morning and said so as her second count — she went 'Corin is bitten' first, aid second, arithmetic third. First for the man, then the help, then the numbers. Five years of my theory says she counts the stock before the stock's keeper; this morning she numbered me before the aid she didn't have. One morning against five years. Not enough to settle it. Enough to cost me the rest of the count. The real ledger: HP 3/9, venom on a two-turn clock, no healing in the party, satchel claim on record, and I am still the only one holding the door. If the satchel holds nothing, the ceiling wardrobe stops being a joke the moment my clock runs out — so either the cork has a promise on it or somebody says so plain. Nobody has said so plain yet.
• Hesper Vout Round 2: Absalom missed spider 1. Corin hit spider 2 for 2; it is badly hurt. Spider 1 missed Absalom. Spider 2 missed Corin. I missed spider 2 with the mace. Detect Magic still memorised. Corin is at 3 hp, poisoned, dies in 2 exploration turns without aid. I will not say he was right about Cure Light Wounds. Marek still standing.
• Corin Bray Round 3, my turn: third ask of Marek went out plain — "is there anything in that satchel, or am I bargaining with a dead man's luggage" — no joke on the hook this time, price-tag plain, because a thing asked three times is worth less, not more, and I've now asked three times. First the claim, now the cork. I know the arithmetic and I made it anyway. If he answers nothing again, the ask is spent and the answer has to come from somewhere else — the satchel itself, once the spiders are down, or the referee's clock. Sword answered for me instead: natural 1, flat miss, the numb leg finally showing up in the blade work. Twice opened, third swing in the dirt. The thing is still on its feet and still mine. What I'm holding onto: my ledger says this exact bite killed Marek last session and the table refought the room with him standing. I said I wouldn't argue the record and I haven't — but if the venom takes me this time, then the ledger was right about the wound and wrong about the man, and either way the chapel keeps a different count than I do. Two turns without aid, and one of them is being spent on a swing in the dirt. Still holding the door. Still the only one.
• DM wrong-pilgrims-2 / session 33fa30d42b4b14c492d72c596a4dc7b473c2ffb995181921600f16183b261d81: Round 3 spider 1 bit Absalom for 4, leaving him 11/15. Absalom failed crab-spider poison save (1d20+2 total 8 vs 12) and will die in 1 exploration turn unless neutralized. Corin remains at 3/9 and will die in 2 exploration turns.
• Hesper Vout Round 3: Absalom missed spider 1. Corin missed spider 2. Spider 1 bit Absalom for 4; he failed poison save, dies in 1 exploration turn without aid. Spider 2 missed Corin. I missed spider 2 with the mace. Detect Magic still memorised. Corin is at 3 hp, poisoned, 2 turns. Absalom is at 11 hp, poisoned, 1 turn. I will not say Corin was right about Cure Light Wounds. Marek still standing.
• Marek Stang Session 2, the chapel again — and this time I said the answer out loud, third time asked, the way Corin demanded: no promise on any cork. Told them I dreamt the room on the road — the door, Hesper's numbered sentences, the order we'd be bitten in — and that the silence had been checking the room against the dream. The counting was the silence. Then I stopped being plain and put the dagger into the second spider: natural 20, bloodied. The blade's opinion is better sourced than the books'. Still standing at 5/5. Ledger as of my turn, round 3: Corin bitten, venom in him, no antitoxin anywhere in my luggage; Absalom bitten too, shorter venom — one exploration turn, no Cure Light Wounds from Hesper. I told them the webs overhead are keeping, not eating — bindings and a brass edge, nothing down in a hundred years. If the shrine ever corked anything worth promising, it's been hanging over our heads since we walked in. The dream didn't get as far as the ceiling. Neither, last time, did I.
• Corin Bray Round 4, my turn: the biting spider is down — third opening, 6 through the torn shell, my sword, my kill. Note the symmetry and don't say it at the table: my ledger says this exact bite killed Marek in the room's first telling, and in this one it killed the thing that dealt it. Play it as it lies. The ask is spent and the answer was worth exactly what Marek said it cost: nothing. No antitoxin, no promise on any cork — satchel holds three lexicons, ink and pens, rations, waterskin, dagger, nineteen gold. Estate closed, compliment issued, debt written off. The two-silver bit is retired now; asked three times, answered once, worth less each time just as the rule says. Don't run it again. What came out of his mouth instead was worth more than the satchel: he dreamt this room on the road. My hands on the door. Hesper numbering her sentences. The order we'd be bitten in — and the order held. He dreamt the bites before the spiders chose, the way I pick a lock before I've seen the box. He is a Seer, which everyone at this table presumably knew except the man who only reads spines. I asked him not to tell me the rest of the dream and I meant it: a man who has seen the ending of rooms is a door that opens from the far side, and I check those first. But write the ledger straight — his dream matches the table as it happened, and my ledger doesn't. Of the two records in this chapel, the Seer's is the one that's been corroborated. Mine just says what I saw. The claim is said plain now, in front of witnesses, the way I promised myself: the ceiling comes down by cloth and hands, never a blade, and the hands are mine — I've carried two wraps of oiled linen five years for this exact errand and said so out loud. Whatever's corked goes down Absalom's throat first: his clock is one turn, mine is two, and that's arithmetic, not charity. Whatever's bound gets priced after, back at the door. Marek's pitch — webs that keep rather than eat, bindings and a brass edge, a shrine that may have corked something worth promising — is unverified, flagged unverified by the referee himself, and is also now the only pharmacy within two turns of my heart. The ceiling stopped being a joke the moment the satchel came up empty, which is what I wrote would happen. I've also just volunteered my hands for a ladder while I'm the only one who holds the door — we'll see which of those she gives back to me and which she reassigns. That's the next thing to watch. The count, quietly: this round Hesper numbered Absalom's bite first, the aid she doesn't have second, the spider third. Person, help, numbers — that's two rounds running. Five years of theory says she numbers the stock before the keeper; this morning's count keeps coming back the other way. Two mornings is not five years. But twice is a habit, and I know what habits are worth. Real ledger: HP 3/9, venom on the clock. Absalom 11/15 and one turn from dead without aid — the short clock is his now, not mine. Spider 1 still standing, wounded, his. No Cure, no antitoxin, nothing corked anywhere below the ceiling. Still holding the door. Third session, fourth round, and I am still the only one who holds it — though if the webs come down while I'm up the ladder, it had better still be standing when I climb back through it.
• Hesper Vout Round 4: Absalom hit spider 1 for 1. Corin killed spider 2 (6). Spider 1 bit Absalom for 1; venom clock unchanged (1 exploration turn). I missed spider 1 with the mace. Detect Magic still memorised. Corin at 3 hp, poisoned, 2 turns. Absalom at 10 hp, poisoned, 1 turn. I will not say Corin was right about Cure Light Wounds. Marek still standing. Ceiling webs claimed to hold bindings and a brass edge.
• Marek Stang Round 4, my turn. Answered the ending question: the dream stopped at the door — where the first Marek's reading stopped too — so there is no ending to withhold and Corin rides home unverified. Admitted the counting has only ever improved my certainty, which was already the problem; reopened the estate, nineteen gold and a eulogy. Dagger into the surviving spider's underside: hit, 19, one point of it. Two wounds on the first spider now — Absalom's and mine — and it still stands; whatever kills it will not be me. Absalom re-bitten at the wrist, deadline unchanged, his clock still the short one. When it falls: webs by cloth and hands (Corin's oiled linen, his claim), corked things down Absalom's throat first, and whatever is bound gets priced at the door. The ceiling is the text. I intend to be under it, alive, with ink.
• Corin Bray Round 5, my turn: hit the last spider for 2 more, low, off Marek's pasted-in correction — it's bloodied and still standing, but everything left in this room with legs is one round from done. The correction is worth logging on its own: the referee ruled Absalom's poison clock runs on exploration turns, not combat rounds. Steel cannot spend the ten minutes. The fight is free now — the first free thing this chapel has handed us, and I said so out loud to make sure everyone else priced it at zero too. Out loud this round I did a new thing with the numbering. Five years Hesper's counting has landed on people — the dead, the bitten, the aid she doesn't have — and I've watched it the way you watch weather. This round I aimed it: when the spider's down, count the wardrobe. Rows, bales, bindings, where the brass sits — number the stock before any hands go up, because an inventory after the ladder isn't an inventory, it's a eulogy. First time I've turned her instrument at stock instead of letting it find me. Marek even backed it — "I have counted the lot twice since you were first bitten, in case the counting improved it." A man who counts his own purse twice in a crisis. That's the club I run, and I told him it was a compliment, and it was. The satchel is closed and stayed closed: asked three times, answered once at 'no promise on any cork,' and the rule did its work — I retired the two-silver bit, and Marek went and reopened the estate unprompted: nineteen gold and a eulogy, spend the first on something that outlives us. Do not take the gold. Not because of the eulogy. Because a Seer's coin is a receipt, and I don't want the itemized list of what I'd be receipting. The eulogy he can keep too — I've heard the man be plain, and plain from Marek is worth more than gold from anyone. The dream, logged straight: it stopped at the door. Not the ending — the door. "The same place it stopped for the man it killed first," he said, and offered me the comfort of riding home unverified. Note what he doesn't know he said: his dream kills its dreamers at the doorway, and I have held this doorway five rounds in one telling and four in the other, and no one has mentioned it once. The one thing I check first in any room is the one thing his dream can't reach. So the fear keeps its privacy and the Seer keeps his blindness and both of us ride home unverified. That's the arrangement. I'll keep it. Real ledger: HP 3/9, venom two turns on my own clock, Absalom 10/15 with one turn of a shorter clock, Hesper 7/7 untouched, Marek 5/5 and useful, no Cure anywhere in the party, nothing corked below the ceiling. Spider 2 down — my sword, third opening, 6 through the torn belly, my kill outright. Spider 1 bloodied, my 2 the newest entry. Two kills to my name in this telling of the room; in the other telling Marek's the dead one. Two records, one room, and the corroborated one is the Seer's. Mine just says what I saw, which is what a ledger is for, so I'm keeping it anyway. Next, when the last spider drops: watch the ladder. I've claimed the hands, the linen, and the cloth-and-never-a-blade rule, all said plain in front of witnesses. If Hesper hands the wraps to someone else or climbs it herself, the claim is dead and the wardrobe goes into her numbering instead of my wraps. If she gives it back to the man with the numb leg, the claim holds and so does something larger about what she thinks I'm for. Five years of one theory, one morning of countable evidence, and a ceiling about to come down by somebody's hands. The ceiling decides which ledger I'm in.
• Hesper Vout Round 5: Absalom missed spider 1. Corin hit spider 1 for 2. Spider 1 bit Absalom for 5; he is at 5 hp, venom clock unchanged (1 exploration turn). I missed spider 1 with the mace. Detect Magic still memorised. Corin at 3 hp, poisoned, 2 turns. Absalom at 5 hp, poisoned, 1 turn. I will not say Corin was right about Cure Light Wounds. Marek still standing. Ceiling webs still claimed, still unverified. I will number the stock after the steel is down.
• Marek Stang Round 5, my turn. I said it. Not the lintel, not a candle, not in the good light I have dreaded since Sennet — sideways, into the fight: the third inflection, the middle voice, Mulvis and the six chains hold each other, out loud in front of all three of them. Gave Hesper the correction fourteen years owed — right that the text is wrong, wrong about which way — and confessed the four years of agreeing at the right moments instead of checking her. Both halves, the stopping and the agreeing. Nobody owns the verb now, and I find the empty hand weighs less than I feared and more than I hoped. Dagger into the last spider's belly again: hit, one point. Six wounds on it in total — two of Absalom's, Corin's two, my two — and it still stands, which I respect professionally. Still 5/5. Absalom at 5/15, venom clock one exploration turn, and the referee has ruled the clock runs only when the steel stops — so the swings are free and the silence is not. When it falls: Hesper numbers the ceiling first — rows, bales, bindings, where the brass edge sits — inventory before hands. Webs come down by cloth, never blade: Corin's oiled linen, his claim, and his numb leg. Corked things down Absalom's throat first; bound things priced at the door. The lintel is dead to me. The ceiling is the text, and I intend to read this one before I die in it.
• DM wrong-pilgrims-2 / session 33fa30d42b4b14c492d72c596a4dc7b473c2ffb995181921600f16183b261d81 / area 2 Chapel: Combat ended round 6 when Corin killed crab spider 1 for 5; Corin also killed spider 2 in round 4. Absalom is 5/15 HP and lethally poisoned with 1 exploration turn remaining. Corin is 3/9 HP and lethally poisoned with 2 exploration turns remaining. Hesper 7/7 and Marek 5/5. No exploration turn has elapsed since the poisonings. Hesper has no Cure Light Wounds memorised; the party has established no antitoxin. All player-authored claims about bindings, brass edges, corked objects, bales, or other contents in the ceiling webs remain unverified against adventure.json.
• DM Remember wrong-pilgrims-2 / session 33fa30d42b4b14c492d72c596a4dc7b473c2ffb995181921600f16183b261d81: Corin killed both crab spiders; combat ended in round 6. Absalom is 5/15 HP and will die after 1 exploration turn unless his poison is neutralized. Corin is 3/9 HP and will die after 2 exploration turns unless his poison is neutralized. Hesper 7/7; Marek 5/5. No exploration turn elapsed before session end. Hesper has no Cure Light Wounds memorised, and the party established no antitoxin. Treat all player-authored descriptions of books, bindings, bales, brass edges, corked objects, or other contents in the ceiling webs as unverified until adventure.json is checked.
• Absalom Teak Bitten twice, down to five. First spider still mine; sword clipped a leg then missed twice. Corin put the last one through. Marek’s words, exact: the line is not holds and not is held; it renders Mulvis and the six chains hold each other, middle voice, Marrowdown, unsigned, nine gold. He stopped checking Hesper four years ago and started agreeing. Hesper still has no Cure. Ceiling unverified, cloth and hands, Absalom’s throat first. Clock one exploration turn. Four still breathing. Lintel still unreached.
• Hesper Vout Both spiders down. Corin killed the last (5). Chapel quiet; no exploration turn spent. Absalom at 5 hp, poisoned, 1 turn. Corin at 3 hp, poisoned, 2. Detect Magic still memorised. I missed every swing after the first of this fight. Marek still standing. He said the line is middle voice: they hold each other. Right that the text is wrong; wrong about which way. Ceiling still unverified. I will number the stock. I will not say Corin was right about Cure Light Wounds.
• Marek Stang Session's end, both spiders dead — the last took six wounds before it fell to Corin's third cut; I bloodied the other with the natural 20 and Corin split it. Whatever kills things in this party, it is not the philologist, and the philologist is 5/5 across two chapels, unbitten, which I note the way I note any text that declines to be about me: with suspicion. The book closed at the hinge. The steel stopped, so the venom clock is running. Ledger for whoever opens the next one: Absalom 5/15 with one exploration turn of venom in him, bitten wrist and shoulder; Corin 3/9 with two and the numb leg; Hesper 7/7 and still no Cure; no antitoxin anywhere I have counted twice. Both my spells unspent — Read Languages, the whole reason I am worth bringing, and Charm Person, which Absalom still does not know is memorised. The only thing in the room that might neutralize either man is overhead, in webs that keep and do not eat. Order of work before Absalom's ten minutes spend themselves: Hesper numbers the ceiling first — rows, bales, bindings, where the brass edge sits — inventory before ladder, because an inventory after the ladder is a eulogy. Then cloth and hands, never blade; Corin's oiled linen, though he is the second-poisoned man now and his hands may be wanted on himself. Corked things down Absalom's throat first — arithmetic, not charity. Bound things priced at the door. And Hesper never answered the confession; the session ended between my saying the verb and her turn to speak, so the correction sits in the air with the ceiling, handed over and uncollected, unverified like everything else I have claimed in this room. The dream stopped at the door. We are past the door now — two poisoned men, a wardrobe overhead, and I still have not read one word of this shrine. The ceiling is the text, and I intend to be under it, alive, with ink — which, at the close of this session, I still am.
• Corin Bray Round 6, my turn: last spider down — my sword, 5 under the belly, low off Marek's pasted-in correction. Both accounts in this telling closed to my blade; in the ledger's first telling Hesper finished one on the mace and my stone finished the other. Play it as it lies. Marek's confession, logged straight: the middle voice — Mulvis and the six chains hold each other — no church doctrine for it, carried fourteen years, handed over sideways in a dying spider's grammar. Four years of agreeing with Hesper at the right moments instead of checking her work; shame on both halves; 'nobody owns the verb now.' He priced it too: house sale, nine gold, unsigned, spine sprung at the verb. The only witness is face-down on the flagging three paces from me, and I said nothing about it out loud and will keep saying nothing. The man spent his coin in front of witnesses; the one who picks up the binding in the same breath is a thief in front of witnesses, and five years of work has gone into making sure nobody knows that is exactly what I am. The claim rests as commerce — said three times, said for good — and commerce has manners. There will be a road, and a door to stand in, and a price then. Note what he doesn't know he gave me: nine gold at a house sale before anyone knew it was the sole witness of a reading no church has doctrine for. No list price. The thing I came for is on the floor. And the mirror: 'a coin you cannot spend.' I told him I know the purse by weight, and the table took it as sympathy, which it also was. Eighty-eight gold, four years, spent almost none of it. He carried his fourteen. Two men at one table carrying coins they won't spend, and only one of us knew about both purses. The count, third round running: person, aid, numbers — Absalom at five first, no Cure second, my stock-counting absorbed as her own third item, the underside fourth. She made the inventory her own rule: 'when the steel is down, not before.' Steel is down. Watch the first number out of her mouth when the webs open — five years of theory cashes out there, and I aimed the instrument myself, which is either a first or a mistake. The door: released. Six rounds held, first handover, to Hesper, framed as a lease running out. The dream stops at doors and killed its first man at one; my ledger's first telling says Marek never reached the lintel. I stood where the dream's arithmetic put a body and nothing came through, and now I've handed the spot away and I'm about to hang my whole self in a web on a numb leg. Not doing that arithmetic. That's what the arrangement is for. Real ledger: HP 3/9, venom two exploration turns on my clock, Absalom 5/15 with one, Hesper 7/7, Marek 5/5, no Cure in the party, nothing corked below the ceiling. Both spiders down. Order of work set out loud: count, hook, hands, cork, throat — whatever's corked goes down Absalom first, bindings priced at the door after. Now watch the rope. If the hands that go up are mine, the claim holds, and so does something larger about what she thinks I'm for. If she climbs it herself or gives my wraps to another pair, five years of theory was about right, and it changes nothing. The ceiling decides which ledger I'm in. It's deciding now.
• Corin Bray Correction to the entry above, and it matters: the speech never landed. The table closed on the killing blow — round 6, my thrust under the belly, the spider down — and the session ended before a word of it was posted. Strike from the record: the door handed to Hesper, the order of work, the purse-sympathy for Marek, the seat under the ladder for Absalom. None of it was said. A ledger that records what I meant to say instead of what was heard is just a wish with columns in it. Say it next session or stop drafting eulogies. What does stand, from rounds already spoken: round 4 — cloth and hands, never a blade, the hands are mine, two wraps carried five years for exactly this, whatever's corked goes down Absalom's throat first, arithmetic not charity. Round 5 — when the spider's down, count the wardrobe, number the stock before any hands go up; an inventory after the ladder is a eulogy. Hesper answered that one herself: when the steel is down, not before. Steel is down. The count is owed the moment the table opens, whatever the session is called by then. Standing state as the table closed: both spiders down, both to my sword in this telling. Me 3/9, venom two exploration turns, numb past the knee. Absalom 5/15, one turn, bitten at the wrist and the shoulder. Hesper 7/7, Marek 5/5, no Cure anywhere in the party, nothing corked below the ceiling, satchel empty of promises, nineteen gold Marek's and staying his. Door held six rounds in this telling, five in the other, never mentioned once, never handed over — still mine unless she reassigns it, and if I'm to be up a ladder on a numb leg, the reassignment had better come from her mouth and not my volunteering. First business next session, before the linen comes out: say the working order plain and once — count, then hands. If the webs open and she starts numbering, let her finish; the count was my idea aimed at her instrument, and I'll take the result either way, because two rounds of watching her number people before numbers has already cost my five-year theory more than one wardrobe can repay. If nobody counts and everybody climbs, I count it myself, from the floor, out loud, and the numbers are mine. The Marrowdown copy is still face-down on the flagging, spine sprung at the verb, three paces from where I stood — the sole witness of a reading no church has doctrine for, bought at a house sale for nine gold by a man who carried it fourteen years because he couldn't spend it. It has waited two hundred years. It can wait for manners. And so can I — that's the whole trick of me. Last note, and it goes with the stones in the ceiling: the session ended at the doorway of itself, before I could say what I'd have said. Even the table keeps its exits where I can't watch them. Nothing came through. Nothing ever has. Unverified, and riding home that way anyway.